


shape without form / shade without color

by catstrophysics



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angel Enjolras, Angst, Art, Blood, Canon Era, Heavy Angst, M/M, Not MCD and Not Graphic Depictions of Violence, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, The Saddest Thing I've Ever Written, but it borders on them with blood and ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25176877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catstrophysics/pseuds/catstrophysics
Summary: Grantaire, almost dying, stumbles into a chapel he hasn't visited in years.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 30





	shape without form / shade without color

**Author's Note:**

> for the amazing [sunlssgrden/lupercaliia](https://sunlssgrden.tumblr.com/), the creator of the absolutely gorgeous art included in this work.
> 
> As the tags say, this is the saddest fic I've written to date, and deals with Grantaire in a fair bit of pain. I have left Major Character Death off the tags, because the above artist and I wanted to intentionally leave things up to the reader/viewer's mind. 
> 
> title from [The Hollow Men](https://msu.edu/~jungahre/transmedia/the-hollow-men.html) by T.S. Eliot.

He’d nearly forgotten where the chapel was, tucked away between a pub and a tenement in the city, dwarfed by blocks upon blocks of identical rectangles and utterly forgettable. Too many years passed, stumbling drunk past the doors after dark, and nothing ever changed. The silent stars watched him overhead, God didn’t answer, and he tripped closer to an early, drunken grave every day. 

He’d nearly forgotten where the chapel was, but he stood before its worn oaken doors now, one hand on the brass of the handle and one eye on the tarnished cross over the doorway, and the world around him swirled sickeningly. 

There wasn’t much to be said for faith in a dying world, in a destiny he didn’t so much follow as get dragged along behind, flask in hand and sleeves rolled up carelessly. Even less, really, to say for faith when there was nothing to believe in. Just himself. 

Alone. 

_Should’ve known it would end up this way._

The door creaked louder than he remembered it would, echoing in the darkened sanctuary. He leaned heavily on the door, stepping through, and flashes of light burst before his eyes at the effort of making it up the step inside. The air tasted thick, coppery, choked out with dust from disuse and the voices of people—just like him, now, desperate—who prayed far too late. 

Through his labored, heavy breathing, he heard a quiet droplet hit against stone. His vision flickered to black again, and when it returned the sound sharpened into the staccato drip of his own blood onto the mosaic floor. Shakily, he dragged a hand across his mouth and the coppery taste intensified as he interrupted the motion with another coughing fit. 

_Blood’s a unique shade of red,_ he noted, _it looks like life when it’s wet._ The blood on the back of his hand, though, had already started to die, deepening into rust against his skin. Through the haze and the flash bulbs popping at the edges of the world, he could see the stained glass windows mocking him, Saint Sebastian and his bloody arrows laughing at the drunk man clinging to the rough edge of a pew. 

Sharp, twisting pain seared through his ribs, and he cried out, doubling over to grasp at what felt like a dagger in his stomach, and the chapel spun again. 

With a stagger, he fell to his knees. The chipped glass tiles of the floor bit through his trousers, and he reasoned that he had probably smeared blood across what was once a mosaic of the archangel Phanuel, pink ribbon twined through his wings. He stood with dirt smeared across his eyes, hands stretched out benevolently, and Grantaire reached out weak, trembling fingers to brush the faded-out gold leaf of the hem of the angel’s robes. Another spluttered cough, and blood splattered across the tired white of the tiles. Everything seemed too much in that moment, the air pressing down around him, and he laid his head down against the cool floor for a second. 

It didn’t help, but bent over like this, hands clasped before him, he almost wondered when the last time he’d prayed in earnest was. 

Never wasn’t true. He used to pray, used to offer questions to the God that wasn’t listening and didn’t care about his lonely, breaking, questioning soul anyways. Then he offered curses, blasphemy dripping off his tongue like the blood did now. 

But he was dying. He’d accepted that he was, now, dying, alone, and Bossuet and Bahorel and Joly and Feuilly and—

He was dying, he thought, _I’m dying._ Putting an “I” to it somehow made everything so much sharper, so much louder, and his coughs echoed off the walls, the ceiling, the rose window at the east end darkened and uncaring. 

It felt too easy to close his eyes, but they slipped shut anyways. His head whirled in earnest now, from the absinthe he’d tried to quell the bleeding with or from blood loss or from his collapse, he couldn’t tell. His throat stung, and he brought a hand up to his mouth blindly again, cracking open his eyes with the vague curiosity if he’d bled. More blood came away on his fingertips, staining his nail beds crimson, and he dropped his head and groaned into the tiles. 

Something rang. It could have been his ears, but it sounded too far away to have come from inside his head. With his head still pressed against the rough edges of the mosaic tiles, he muttered a quiet, irreverent prayer, tacking on an “amen” to a stream of swearing like he used to when he was ten. 

No one answered, and his words died quickly in the empty sanctuary. 

He tried again, words grating over his raw throat. 

“Dear God, I’m sorry I was never what you wanted. I never had faith,” he spit the word out with another bloody cough, “and I’ve never really believed in you or anything, anyways. But I’m dying.” He drew in a shaky breath, and his ribs seized again. “I’m dying.” 

“Say amen,” came a soft voice. “We’ll hear you.” 

It seemed, in his last few minutes, he’d begun to hear things. Rolling over to clear his head seemed like far too much effort for how exhausted he was, but the voice had a quiet urgency to it that compelled him to; it didn’t echo in the sanctuary like his shaking coughs, instead piercing through the still air and leaving nothing in its wake. 

He lifted his head to find the voice, even as his heartbeat surged in his ears and he had to pause halfway to looking to let the blood rush away from his face. 

A man in white robes stood behind the pew he’d last touched, fingers just overlapping where Grantaire had smeared a bloody handprint against the grimy, light wood. He was smiling, nothing more than the soft, kind turn of pink lips upwards, and he lifted his other hand in a benevolent greeting. 

Grantaire bowed his head back down, but his eyes refused to close. His whole body ached; sleep couldn’t be too far away now, before he blacked out from pain or from simply not caring anymore. He could will it to come faster, could force his eyes shut and force his body to the floor, wait for everything to end. 

He didn’t. “Give me just,” he broke off again, another cough that wracked his whole body. “Just one reason why I should say anything.” 

The man took a step forward—completely silent, no rustle of fabric or tap of a shoe against the stonework—and inclined his head, sending golden, shimmery locks of hair tumbling across his forehead. Slowly, as though Grantaire wasn’t meant to see them at all, wings unfolded behind the man’s narrow frame and tossed themselves back in an open display. 

“You’re dying. No other reason.” The man held out one hand, as more of an apology than anything. “You’re dying here, alone, on the floor of a church you never believed in.” 

He shook his head, and it sent a world of new colors swimming across his vision. “Not alone. You.” He gestured with as much energy as he could muster, managing to wave a halfhearted hand towards the man’s feet. 

The man just smiled. 

“Bloody useful answer,” Grantaire muttered. Then something the angel—he’d started calling him an angel in his head—registered, and what little sluggish blood still ran through his heart chilled. “You said… ‘m dying.” 

He offered another smile, and his eyes twinkled. Unreal eyes, the first color he’d seen that truly felt ethereal, and he bowed his head again. 

“Are you here to get me?” he asked. 

One more smile, soured with pity and concern. 

His ribs ached, and his head spun, and his hands had started to shake minutes ago and hadn’t stopped yet, and he was _tired._ So eternally, painfully tired, and yet he dragged himself to his knees—his vision disappeared for another moment—and shuffled to the angel’s feet, too scared to touch his robes for risk of staining them with blood. 

“Enjolras?” The word—name—had formed itself in his mind, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to speak it into existence. 

He nodded. “Grantaire.” That was acknowledgement enough, and he let out a broken sob that resolved itself into another coughing fit. 

God, he was tired. Keeping his eyes open hurt, the vague light from the white robes inches from his eyes stinging his senses. He raised one hand to the angel, the motion a prayer in itself, and held his fingers outstretched, begging for something, _anything._

He found nothing, and long, delicate fingers reached out to his cheek, pausing a hair away from touching him. 

He wanted to lean into the touch, but his body wouldn’t listen, and another wave of exhaustion rippled through him, forcing shivers through his limbs. It was comfort enough to stare up at the soft, determined face over him, looking down on him and through him and holding no judgement for how he got to be here. 

“You can sleep now,” Enjolras said after an eternity passed. “Back where you were when I came.” He slowly withdrew his hand from next to Grantaire’s cheek to gesture to the mosaic of Phanuel, now with the reddish-brown trails of blood across his pristine robes. Grantaire lowered his hand in defeat before doubling over in pain to clutch at his ribs, shuffling on bloody knees the few feet it took to separate himself from Enjolras. 

Collapsing back onto the stone should have hurt, but the faintest hints of color graced the grey floor just past his glasswork resting place, blues and greens and a fiery, bloody red in the middle. 

The sun was rising. 

His last drop of energy went into turning his head to seek out Enjolras for a benevolent smile, but he never got there before dropping unconscious, cheek pressed to the open, welcoming palm of the archangel Phanuel.

***

The sunrise sent a wash of color over Grantaire’s still form, covering up the drying blood across his face and hands. As the sun broke past the rooftops of Paris, a silent “amen” echoed down the streets.

**Author's Note:**

> Our deepest apologies. Hope you enjoyed. If you liked the art at the end of this fic, please consider [telling the artist](https://lupercaliia.tumblr.com/ask) or letting us know down in the comments! She's ridiculously talented and deserves so much appreciation. 
> 
> [Artist's tumblr](https://lupercaliia.tumblr.com/) & [writer's tumblr](https://catstrophysics.tumblr.com/)


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